Old Hunters on the New Wild Read online

  Chapter 5 – Savanna Love…

  “What’s wrong, Mother-son? Do the rings circling my eye offend you?”

  “Of course they don’t. Do you think you’re the first clone I’ve been with?”

  “Of course not, Mother-son. Forgive me if I spoke out of place.”

  Cayden couldn’t articulate it, but there existed something very different about the clone female with whom he shared his tent that night after he failed to pull the trigger and kill a targeted genolope. The female didn’t shirk from him as his finger softly traced those blue bands circling her right eye. She didn’t turn her face away as he stared into those zeroes and ones that composed the outer band, didn’t flinch as he stared at the thin and thick hashes of the barcode that compiled her inner circle. He had so much more to yet learn before he might read every intimate secret held in those blue, tattoo bands. If he knew more, he might tell if that female who pressed against him might’ve been some clone out on the run, a fugitive who fled to a savanna camp of mudders to escape whatever work for which she had been designed. He might tell if that female was no clone at all, if that female was in fact a natural woman, one who accepted a clone’s marking to find a place in a world increasingly cold and uncaring to humanity’s needs. If only he was more experienced, Cayden thought he might glimpse at that those rings and learn so much about that female’s composition – of her body’s resistance to disease, of the limits of her strength, of her temperament, of her desire to please, or of her wants to feel satisfied.

  “Do you see anything strange within my circles, Mother-son?”

  Cayden smiled. “I do not.”

  “Could you if you looked a while longer?”

  “Perhaps,” and he continued to trace that female’s circles with his finger.

  Cayden realized that none of the doll girls had ever captivated him as did that mudder female. He had fully felt the flesh of so many clone lovers, of so many template body types, of so many skin tones and wardrobe styles. Yet the female who stroked Cayden’s neck seemed so unique and new that his heart thundered. Her body was lithe and tanned, slender and hard after travelling so many miles upon the savanna, shouldering her burden to move her clone community’s tents from one hunting ground to another. Her hair was bronzed from so many days beneath the unchecked sun. And her deep, brown eyes bravely returned his gaze. Her eyes didn’t flinch as he stared into those blue rings that branded her of clone kind. That female didn’t appear concerned to keep secrets from him. She seemed to welcome his study, and Cayden wished he knew the answers that female might’ve wanted him to decipher in her rings of binary numbers and barcode.

  The bodies of all those doll lovers he so often employed were so much softer. The doll girls possessed such wide hips to stir a man’s desire, with swelling breasts that clutched for a man’s wants. The clone lovers Cayden previously knew were all explicitly shaped for his arousal, with limbs formed to satisfy man’s crude desires, with lips that would never hesitate to please. And yet none of those doll girls thundered Cayden’s heart as did that female shaped as much by the savanna as the chromosomal recipe her genetic makers infused into her blood.

  “Do you have some one else?”

  The question surprised Cayden. None of the doll girls ever showed any curiosity to ply him for such details.

  “Why would you ask?”

  The female frowned. “Does my question upset you? Did human men not once marry mates for a lifetime?”

  Cayden chuckled. “Perhaps they did in ceremony, if they failed to do so in practice. But why would you think we continued that custom now?”

  The female hesitated before answering. “As a man, as a natural man, are you not trying to preserve all you can of the old world?”

  “I don’t know. I never imagined myself as a husband.”

  Was he a collector, or an archivist, of a fading world? Cayden wondered. Was that why he loved all the old clocks, all the old violins and pianos, and all the old books kept within his family home? He realized as that female pushed closer to him that he had never before thought of looking for a book about love. He never read a play concerning star-crossed lovers, nor read poetry about unrequited love. Was there something more to his father’s urging to take a human lover than an old man’s jealousy that his world hadn’t known a doll girl’s easy love? Cayden, who had asked is father so much about the hunt and the savanna, suddenly thought it was strange that he had never questioned his father about what that old hunter had felt towards Cayden’s mother. He had asked Wyatt so much about the killing, but he had never asked the man about the loving. And what did it mean that a female clone with deep, brown eyes summoned such curiosity within him?

  “Do the mudders of the savanna claim mates?” The female tensed for the first time at Cayden’s question. “No. Don’t answer that. It’s a foolish thing to ask. The females I’ve seen on the savanna just look so different than any of the models displayed in the pixel pages.”

  “I don’t know what pixel pages are.”

  Cayden chuckled. “Of course not. The females in those advertisements would be too soft to survive out here in the new wild.”

  Cayden leaned into the female and tasted the earth’s dust as he kissed her. He pressed the woman against him, and his heart thrilled at the touch of that lithe body against his own. The night was more exotic than any he previously knew. Why did he care to know if that female was in the custom of sharing tents with the other male mudders? He never concerned himself with such a trivia thing when sleeping with the doll girls. His hands lowered, and the female lowered her touch as well. What if the doll girls would ever onward disappoint him? Would he become the hardened veteran of the expedition, as was his father? Had Wyatt often shared his own tent with the females of the new wild?

  Cayden pulled his face from the female’s hair as her legs wrapped around his waist.

  “Why did you come to my tent?”

  She planted kisses upon his chest. “Why does it matter? I’m here now.”

  “I’m curious.”

  She laughed at him. Had the doll girls ever laughed? “Surely, I’m not the first clone you’ve made love to.”

  “Did my father send for you? To help me forget my day’s failure on the hunt?”

  She shook her head. “Your father didn’t make a request, though I have come because of your failure?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Those dark eyes peered deeply into Cayden. “I’ve come into your bed to harden you, Mother-son. I’ve come to love you, so that tomorrow you might think of my warmth wrapped around you, so that the memory of my touch might help you find the strength to pull your weapon’s trigger.”

  Cayden considered that response. “Answer me a last question.”

  “You ask too many questions for a hunter?”

  “Tell me your name.”

  “Don’t the circles around my eye tell you enough?”

  Cayden shook his head. “Oh, I don’t want to know the model number the geneticists assigned you. I want to know what the camp calls you, if they call you anything at all.”

  “My kind calls me Kendra.”

  Cayden threw himself into her then, and his body felt alive as his senses shared every gasp and quiver that rippled trough the body of his night’s lover. He never paid so much attention to so many small sensations – the salt of her skin, the pitch of her moan, the strength of her grasp. Cayden Holmes thought the savanna was a very strange place. He thought it was a land meant for hunters, for men who wished to conquer more than doll girls who danced and glowed in the weekly pixel pages.

  He vowed he would pull his weapon’s trigger come the next day. He would not fail when the next opportunity to take a trophy presented itself to him. He felt himself change as he panted with Kendra.

  He had made love to brunette, French maids and blonde, pom-pom girls. He had often employed multiple doll girls for a single night’s session of lovemaking. Yet before that exotic visitor came unannounced to his ten
t, Cayden Holmes suspected he had never tried so hard to insure that his lover received her full share of the pleasure.

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